Predictions of the future were very popular when I was growing up in the 1950s. By now we were supposed to be living on the Moon and Mars, experiencing a "Jetsons" world of flying cars and robot servants.

Frankly, daily life in today's world 50 years later isn't that much different for me. Yes, styles have changed, and we're driving cars that have automatic transmissions with 5 or more speeds instead of just 3, but I'm still turning a steering wheel and stepping on a gas pedal, driving on a black-top road and still sitting at a red light.

I may be writing this on a computer at home, but we had computers 50 years ago, too. When I attended the New York World's Fair in 1964, I used a picture phone at the AT&T pavilion, which they promised we'd have before the decade was out. Anyone using a picture telephone today?

We can chat online with a webcam, but nobody planned that, it was part of the guerilla technology that the Internet ushered in. And in the final analysis, who really bothers with it on a regular basis, anyway? Sometimes the futurists imagine things that real people don't care about and never use.

I wrote & presented a paper about 6 years ago, that contended the last 50 years have given us LESS tangible change than the previous 50, that real change has actually slowed. Taking 1950 as the anchor point, I tried to show that what has happened from 1950 to 2000 is less revolutionary & innovative than what happened from 1900 to 1950.